Age of Dinosaurs

This year my husband and I travelled out to Winton and went to The Age of Dinosaurs. This is a must see and I was very impress with what they have done. It is very popular and you must book a head. 

Ultimate Dinosaur tour 

The Ultimate Dinosaur tour includes a guided tour of the Collection Room, Fossil Preparation Laboratory, The March of the Titanosaurs exhibition and a self-guided walk of Dinosaur Canyon. Duration: 3 to 4 hours. 

Prices 

Adult 

$75

Concession (senior, veteran or student) 

$70

Children (5 to 17 years)

$45

Children (4 years and under)

Free

Family (2 adults and their children) 

$200 

GETTING HERE

The Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum is 24km south-east of Winton, a town of 1,000 residents in Outback Queensland, and 600km south-west of Townsville. Visitors travelling from Longreach will drive north-west along the Landsborough Highway for 164km before turning left in to Dinosaur Drive. From the highway, it is a further 11km to the Museum on a sealed road. 

The Museum is located on top of a large mesa named The Jump-Up and is accessible to all types of cars, vans and coach buses. Most caravans can be towed to the top of the mesa. The Museum provides an unhitching area at the base of the mesa for visitors towing a caravan with a small 2WD vehicle.

AUSTRALIAN DINOSAURS

Not many dinosaurs are known from the Mesozoic of Australia. In fact only 25 have proper scientific names based on fossil material. Even though dinosaurs first evolved in the Triassic Period, no dinosaur bones of this age have ever been found in Australia. And yet, we know dinosaurs lived in Australia during the Triassic, since footprints have been found in Triassic rocks from southeast Queensland.

In Australia there have been some scattered discoveries of dinosaur footprints but most occur in a handful of locations. When it is possible to assign them to ichnospecies some names are used to describe similar footprints the world over, others appear to be unique to Australia.

The Mesozoic Era includes three periods: the Triassic (251–201 Mya), Jurassic (201–145 Mya), and the Cretaceous (145–66 Mya), the longest of the three periods, extending 80 million years when the dinosaurs and many other animals and plants became extinct.

NEW DISCOVERIES 

2019 A new Australian winged reptile

In 2017 on the banks of a creek on a remote property outside of Winton local grazier Bob Elliott discovered parts of what would become the most complete pterosaur ever found in Australia. He identified parts of the lower jaw, incomplete bones from the wing and a partial tooth. Pterosaur fossils are rare in Australia with fewer than 20 specimens reported. Their rarity is due to the hollow nature of their bones, as well as the limited outcrop of Mesozoic rock found in Australia. This large pterosaur, represented by a single well-preserved specimen, would have soared across the skies of prehistoric Winton 96 million years ago, and was most like an apex predator. Analysis of the bones indicate that this pterosaur was fully grown at the time of its death, with a wingspan of around four metres.

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You must try and visit !